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Lunar Outpost Eagle to fly on Starship – blazing a trail for lunar highways

Artist rendering of the Lunar Outpost Eagle Lunar Terrain Vehicle. Credit: Lunar Outpost

Space News recently reported that Colorado-based Lunar Outpost has signed an agreement with SpaceX to use Starship to deliver their lunar rover, known as the Lunar Outpost Eagle, to the Moon. Announced November 21, the contract supports the Artemis program with surface mobility and infrastructure services. The agreement positions Starship as the delivery vehicle for Lunar Outpost’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV), which is a contender for NASA’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services (LTVS) program. The exact terms of the contract, including the launch schedule, were not disclosed in the announcements. Lunar Outpost has assembled a contractor team under the banner “Lunar Dawn” to execute the company’s LTV solution. The collaborative development program includes in industry leaders Leidos, MDA Space, Goodyear, and General Motors.

Rover Design Features

  • Mobility and Functionality: The Lunar Outpost Eagle is designed to support both crewed and autonomous navigation on the lunar surface. It’s built to operate even during the harsh lunar night, exhibiting resilience against the Moon’s extreme temperature changes.
  • Collaborative Development: The Lunar Dawn team brings expertise in spacecraft design, robotics, automotive technology, and tire manufacturing, ensuring a robust and versatile design.
  • Size and Capacity: Described as truck-sized, the Eagle LTV is intended to be a valuable vehicle for lunar operations, capable of transporting heavy cargo to support NASA’s Artemis astronauts and commercial activities.
  • Testing and Refinement: The design has undergone human factors testing at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, with feedback from astronauts being used to refine the vehicle’s usability and functionality.

Future Plans

  • NASA’s LTV Program: Lunar Outpost is one of three companies selected by NASA for the LTV program to develop rovers to support future Artemis missions. The other two companies are Intuitive Machines and Venturi Astrolab. After a preliminary design review (PDR), NASA will select at least one company for further development and demonstration, with the goal of having a rover operational in time for Artemis 5, currently scheduled for 2030.
  • Commercial Operations: Beyond NASA’s usage, the rovers will be available for commercial operations when not in use by the agency, aiming to support a sustainable lunar economy. This includes plans for infrastructure development and scientific exploration.
  • Series A Funding: Lunar Outpost has recently secured a Series A funding round to accelerate the development of the Lunar Outpost Eagle, ensuring that the rover project moves forward regardless of the outcome of NASA’s selection process.
  • Long-Term Vision: The company’s vision extends to enabling a sustainable human presence in space, with plans to leverage robotics and planetary mobility for development of infrastructure to harness space resources.

This partnership with SpaceX and the development of Eagle under the Lunar Dawn program are pivotal steps in advancing both NASA’s lunar exploration goals and commercial activities on the Moon.

Once delivered to the Moon by Starship, the Eagle rover will drive over harsh regolith terrain which, as discovered by Apollo astronauts when driving the Lunar Roving Vehicle, presents several unique challenges due to the Moon’s distinct environmental conditions. First, lunar dust is highly abrasive and can become electrostatically charged sticking to surfaces and mechanisms resulting in wear and degradation of wheels, bearings, and sensors potentially leading to equipment failure. The Moon’s low gravity can make traction difficult. Rovers might slip or skid becoming less stable when accelerating, braking or turning. Terrain variability and nonuniformity on loose powdery dust or sharp, rocky outcrops could cause stability issues.

These problems can be solved by creating roads with robust, smooth surfaces for safe and reliable mobility on the Moon. Initially, the regolith could be leveled by robots with rollers to compact the regolith to make it less likely to be kicked up by rover wheels. Eventually, technology being developed by companies like Ethos Space for infrastructure on the Moon using their robotic system for melting regolith in place for fabricating lunar landing pads, could be used to build smooth, stable roads.

A network of roads could be constructed to transport water and other resources harvested at the poles to where it would be needed in settlements around the Moon extending from high latitudes down to the equatorial regions. As envisioned by the Space Development Network, this system of roads could be created to provide access to a variety of areas to mine valuable resources as well as thoroughfares to popular exploration and tourism sites. The development of the highway system could start at the poles with telerobots, then eventually be expanded to include equatorial areas and would be fabricated autonomously prior to the arrival of large numbers of settlers.

Longer term, a more efficient method of transportation on the Moon could be magnetic levitation (maglev) trains. Research into this technology has already been proposed by NASA which is actively developing a project named “Flexible Levitation on a Track” (FLOAT), which aims to create a maglev railway system on the lunar surface. This system would use magnetic robots levitating over a flexible film track to transport materials, with the potential to move up to 100 tons of material per day. The FLOAT project has advanced to phase two of NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

Artist’s rendering of the Flexible Levitation on a Track (FLOAT) maglev lunar railway system to transport materials on the Moon. Credit: Ethan Schaler / Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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Progress on inflatable lunar habitats

Conceptual illustration of a Moon base composed of inflatable habitats near one of the lunar poles. Credits: ESA / Pneumocell

The European Space Agency (ESA) recently published a report on a design study of an inflatable lunar habitat. The work was done by Austrian based Pneumocell in response to an ESA Open Space Innovation Platform campaign. The concept utilizes ultralight prefabricated structures that would be delivered to the desired location, inflated and then covered with regolith for radiation protection and thermal insulation. The main components of the habitat are toroidal greenhouses that are fed natural sunlight via a rotating mirror system that follow the sun. Since the dwellings are located at one of the lunar poles, horizontal illumination is available for most of the lunar night. Power is provided by photovoltaic arrays attached to the mirror assemblies. During short periods of darkness power is provided by batteries or fuel cells.

Cutaway view of the inflatable lunar habitat. Credits: ESA / Pneumocell

The detailed system study worked out engineering details of the most challenging elements including life support, power sources, temperature control, radiation protection and more. The greenhouses would provide sustenance and an environmentally controlled life support system for two inhabitants recycling everything. The authors claim that “…it appears possible to create in the long term a closed system…” This remains to be validated.

Inflatable space habitats have many advantages over rigid modules including lower weight, packaging efficiency, modularity and psychological benefit to the inhabitants because after deployment, the interior living space is much larger for a given mass. Several organizations and individuals have already begun to investigate inflatable habitats for lunar applications. The Pneumocell study mentions ESA’s Moon Village SOM-Architects concept which is a hybrid rigid and partly inflatable structure. Also referenced is the Foster’s and Partners Lunar Outpost design which envisions a 3D printed dome shaped shell formed over an inflatable enclosure.

Foster and Partners Lunar Outpost constructed from a hybrid of 3D printed modules and an inflatable structure. Credits: Foster and Partners

SSP previously covered another hybrid lunar inflatable structure designed by Rohith Dronadula. This design combines a collapsible rigid framework with an inflatable dome, can be autonomously launched from Earth and deployed through telepresence.

Illustration of a hybrid lunar inflatable structure. Credits: Rohith Dronadula

The Pneumocell report concludes: “A logical continuation of this study would be to build a prototype on Earth, which can be used to investigate various details of the suggested components … ” Such an approach would be relatively inexpensive and could inform the future design of flight hardware.

Speaking of ground based prototypes, The Space Development Network has been exploring inflatable structures for habitats on the Moon for some time. Doug Plata, president of the nonprofit organization working to advance space development hopes to display an inflatable version of his InstaBase concept at BocaChica, Texas when SpaceX attempts its first orbital launch of Starship, hopefully within the a year or so. When comparing his design to Pneumocell’s, Plata says in an email to SSP, “One difference is that we have the modules directly attached to each other and so avoid the mass of those connecting corridors.”

Conceptual illustration of InstaBase – a fully inflatable lunar base capable of supporting an initial crew of eight. Credits: The Space Development Network

In reference to the greenhouse designs, Plata continues: “As for the GreenHabs, they have a pretty interesting design to take advantage of direct sunlight. We address the shielding conceptually by fully covering the GreenHabs and then use PV solar drapes and transport the electricity into the GreenHabs via wires. By converting sunlight to electricity to LEDs, more surface area of plants can be grown than the surface area of the solar panels powering them. This is due to the full spectrum of the sun being converted to only those frequencies that plants use.”

It is great to see such creativity and variety of designs for abodes on the Moon. When reliable transportation systems such as Starship blaze the trail, we will be ready with easily deployable, safe and voluminous habitats for lunar settlements.

Artist rendering of the interior of an inflatable toroidal greenhouse in a lunar habitat. Credits: Pneumocell
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Masten’s Rocket Mining System

Artist depiction of a lander descending to the lunar surface carrying a rover housing Masten’s Rocket Mining System. Credits: Masten Space Systems

Called RocketM for Resource Ore Concentrator using Kinetic Energy Targeted Mining, Masten Space Systems has partnered with Honeybee Robotics and Lunar Outpost to design a novel system for blasting ice out of lunar regolith for ISRU under NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge program.

Lunar Outpost rover decending to the lunar surface down a ramp deployed off a Masten lander. Credits: Masten Space Systems

RocketM equipment would be housed aboard a Lunar Outpost rover delivered to lunar surface via Masten’s lunar lander. After unloading, the rover would be robotically navigated by a geologic team to an excavation site in the Aitken Basin near the Moon’s south pole. Upon arrival over the target area, the RocketM dome is extended down to the surface to create a seal over the regolith. A rocket is then ignited in a series of 1/2 second pulses fluidizing the regolith into icy grains which are conveyed out of the dome via a Honeybee Robotics PlanetVac pneumatic sampling system for processing. Beneficiation of the particles is accomplished using an Aqua Factorem process for separation into purified ice and other useful components. Aqua Factorem has been covered by SSP in a previous post. The whole process would only take 5-10 minutes.

A view of the inner workings of RocketM showing a centrally located pressure dome extending down to form a seal on the lunar surface. Credits: Masten Space Systems
Cutaway view showing a 100lb thrust rocket engine firing half-second bursts to heat the regolith to a depth of 2 meters releasing icy grains for processing to extract water. Credits: Masten Space Systems.

The stored water can subsequently be electrolyzed using solar energy into hydrogen and oxygen for lunar operations. What is so exciting about this ISRU system is that the rocket engine can be refueled by the mined products enabling an estimated useful life of 5 years.

Masten has tested the system using simulated lunar regolith providing groundwork toward optimizing conditions within the pressure dome. Further testing is needed at the system level to validate flight readiness.

As stated on Masten’s blog: “Usable as drinking water, rocket fuel, and other vital resources, lunar ice extraction is critical to maintain a sustained presence on the Moon and allow future missions to Mars and beyond. It can also be used in conjunction with other volatiles found in lunar regolith, such as oxygen and methane, to support energy, construction, and manufacturing needs. There’s a lot of promise – water excavation is just step one!”

Watch Masten’s video describing the system.